By WILLIAM YARDLEY

August 4, 2014

Wilfred Feinberg, a federal appeals court judge in New York who ruled in major cases involving the Vietnam War and labor rights over his five decades on the bench and shepherded the careers of many young lawyers to prominence, died on July 31 in Manhattan. He was 94.

His son, Jack, said the cause was pneumonia.

Judge Feinberg was a lawyer in private practice in 1961 when President John F. Kennedy appointed him to a newly created position on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Five years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him to succeed Thurgood Marshall on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He served 45 years there, eight as its chief judge.

In 1966, he was part of a three-judge panel that found that a young military draftee had violated a new law prohibiting the burning of draft cards. The year before, after a wave of draft-card burnings in protest of the Vietnam War, Congress had made burning the cards illegal.

Lawyers for the defendant, David J. Miller, argued that card-burning was a symbolic protest protected as free speech. The appeals court affirmed a lower-court ruling, which said Congress had the right to pass the law under its authority to create and maintain armies.

“The range of symbolic conduct intended to express disapproval is broad; it can extend from a thumbs-down gesture to political assassination,” Judge Feinberg wrote in the majority opinion. “Would anyone seriously contend that the First Amendment protects the latter?”

On June 23, 1971, Judge Feinberg was one of three on an eight-judge panel who dissented from a majority opinion that delayed the publication of the Pentagon Papers in The New York Times. A lower court judge had ruled that The Times could publish the documents, which chronicled American involvement in the Vietnam War, but five of the appellate judges ordered publication to be delayed to allow the government time to prove that it would threaten national security.

Days later, the United States Supreme Court allowed the publication to go forward.

Later in the 1970s, Judge Feinberg was involved in a decision that required a North Carolina textile company, J. P. Stevens and Company, to allow employees to pursue efforts to unionize. The case inspired the 1979 movie “Norma Rae,” with Sally Field as a textile-factory labor activist.

Judge Feinberg was born on June 22, 1920, in Manhattan, the youngest of three children of Jac and Eva Feinberg. The family had a company that sold hosiery.

He graduated from Columbia College in 1940, then served in the Army in Europe during World War II. He went on to attend Columbia Law School, where he was editor of the Law Review and graduated in 1946. He spent much of the next 15 years in private practice before President Kennedy appointed him to the federal bench.

Judge Feinberg’s selection to the appeals court in 1965 was to fill a seat being vacated by Judge Marshall, who had been named solicitor general. Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York and some prominent advisers had urged President Johnson to select Edward Weinfeld, who was also a federal judge. Judge Weinfeld had many more years of experience and a national reputation. He was 64 at the time; Judge Feinberg was 45.

Some people speculated that Johnson had been influenced by the fact that Judge Feinberg’s older brother, Abraham, was a major contributor to Democratic candidates. Others said the president chose Judge Feinberg for his potential to have a long career on the court.

Besides his son, he is survived by his wife of 68 years, the former Shirley Marcus; his daughters, Susan Stelk and Jessica Twedt; and six grandchildren.

Judge Feinberg’s former clerks include Lee C. Bollinger, the president of Columbia; Richard L. Revesz, the former dean of the New York University School of Law; and Gerard E. Lynch, an appellate judge on the Second Circuit.

Judge Feinberg was a leader in judicial administration, serving on national committees. In 2004, he received the Edward J. Devitt Distinguished Service to Justice Award. The selection committee was led by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.

Mr. Revesz said in an interview that though they differed ideologically, Justice Rehnquist had longstanding high regard for Judge Feinberg. Years earlier, after being appointed to the Supreme Court, Justice Marshall had selected Mr. Revesz as one of his clerks. In the move from New York to Washington, Mr. Revesz shared a moving trailer with his co-clerk in Judge Feinberg’s office, Alan B. Vickery. Mr. Vickery was going to work for Justice Rehnquist.